ARTICLES ABOUT AMERICAN CULTURE BY DATE - PAGE 2

INDIANAPOLIS - The late Dan Wheldon epitomized the popular notion of a race-car driver: He was fearless, talented, charismatic and dashing, right down to his white-framed sunglasses. But after Wheldon won last year's Indianapolis 500 in a dramatic finish, the Englishman broke down and cried in Victory Lane. Unabashedly. Such was the reverence Wheldon held for the Indy 500 and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that has stood within a residential neighborhood at 16th Street and Georgetown Road for more than a century.

At one point in the first incarnation of the 1990s television show "Beavis and Butt-Head," heavy metal-loving, pop-culture-eviscerating co-star Butt-Head made the following observation: "Some people are dumb. " Oh, Butt-Head, if only you knew what was to come. MTV — the network that first aired "Beavis and Butt-Head," a show many condemned as a celebration of stupidity — has now brought the awkward and offensive teens back with new episodes. Like most mature adult men, I tuned in with nostalgic excitement.

Sharon Robinson, the daughter of baseball barrier-breaker Jackie Robinson, says she finds it ironic that Major League Baseball once mandated the exclusion of African-American players but now actively recruits black youths into the game. Sharon Robinson will be the featured MVP on Sunday at Opening Day festivities for "Pride and Passion: The African-American Baseball Experience," a traveling exhibit that will be on display at the Highland Park Public Library, 494 Laurel Ave., through Oct. 1. Highland Park is one of only 50 libraries nationwide selected to host the exhibition, which spans the post-Civil War era to the present.

Randa Ibrahim was serving coffee to the guests in her Palos Hills living room when her 17-year-old daughter distractedly breezed through the living room and out the back door without so much as a nod. "She won't come say hi," Ibrahim said disapprovingly. "I don't like the way she just comes through." Showing respect to elders is important in Arab-American culture. Ibrahim, a 47-year-old Palestinian woman who grew up in Kuwait before coming to the United States in 1982 has tried to instill in her children the values she was raised with.

Albert Lawrence "Larry" Suggett Jr. grew up in Evanston but also spent time at his family's cabin in Wisconsin's North Woods during the 1920s and '30s. There, his family befriended members of the Chippewa Native American tribe, who invited him to their ceremonies and taught him to appreciate nature. Many years later, even throughout a long, successful career in sales, Mr. Suggett's affection for and connection with Native American history and culture never waned. "He had a special place in his heart for Native Americans and their teachings," said his daughter Susan Joy Gates.

Bidding Halloween farewell For my entire life, Halloween has been there for me -- the one holiday that I actually understood and looked forward to every year more than any other. The only day of the year that I, and I am sure many others, actually felt comfortable. Everyone else was into the stuff I liked on that day. I felt normal. Deciding what I would be for Halloween was always a long tug of war with my parents on how much I could spend on a mask that year. I had to make sure I picked the right one, the mask that no one else would be wearing that day. I had to be the scariest.

Pre-Columbus Day gathering: For some, Columbus Day isn't really about that day in 1492. "We do not celebrate Columbus Day," says Georgina Roy. "We were here long before Columbus." The day before the national holiday, Native Americans will gather on the grounds of Indian Boundary Park, once home to the Pottawatomie Indians, for an annual pre-Columbus Day event that includes drumming, singing and dancing to honor the nations that were here before Columbus arrived in the Americas.

"Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture" By Ellen Ruppel Shell Penguin Press, 296 pages, $25.95 "In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood Virtue" By Lauren Weber Little, Brown, 288 pages, $24.99 They use the same main word in their titles, but these two books by seasoned journalists have different subjects: cheap stuff, in the case of Ellen Ruppel Shell's "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture"; cheap people...

The African Festival of the Arts is about the roots of African and African-American culture. Musical representation will be hip-hop from the Pharcyde (Saturday), jazz with Ahmad Jamal (Sunday) and some funk from the Ohio Players (Friday) and George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic (Monday). The festival will highlight other aspects of African culture and life with fine arts, film and quilting pavilions, a Wellness Village and Drumming Village. Food is a huge part of most cultures, but also serves as a meeting ground, social setting and familial gathering time, so visit the Bank of the Nile Food Court.

'The Food of a Younger Land' By Mark Kurlansky Riverhead, 416 pages, $27.95 Mark Kurlansky is a food writer with a difference. He began his career as a foreign correspondent, and such best-selling books as "Cod" and "Salt" reflect his sympathetic understanding of the history and culture of other nations. He turned his attention to his native land with equally savory results in "The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell" and "The Last Fish Tale." It's hard to imagine a better editor, then, for this delightful compilation of pieces written in the early 1940s for the Federal Writers Project, which planned to follow up its series of state guidebooks with a volume called "America Eats."